"The world is tired of plastic Christians," she said. "I was tired of being a plastic Christian.
I told everybody I had it all together, and I was falling apart. And I was scared to death to tell
somebody."

At the conferences, she talks about her experiences and how her faith and family's support
helped her survive. The meetings include workshops offering one-on-one advice for participants.

Graham, who received psychological counseling after her second divorce, says in her workshops
that some Christians might need therapy in addition to spiritual counseling.

Graham has also written several books, including
In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart, about her own family's hardships; and
I'm Pregnant . . . Now What? about teen pregnancy.

"My concern is for the person who's in the church and is stuck because of one of these major
issues in their life . . . and they want to know how to get unstuck."

Graham, 57, has the same tall, graceful bearing as her famous father. A lifelong Presbyterian,
she doesn't consider herself an evangelist, instead describing what she does as "sharing."

"I think I'm dealing with believers already who are just struggling in their lives like I did,"
she said. "A lot of people have been taught that if you're depressed there's something wrong with
you spiritually. That's so unfair. It's a physical issue.

"No one was addressing it with me. I was told to get a Bible and go up into the mountains, and
I'd be fine. And I knew I wasn't. I wanted to take a gun into the woods and shoot myself."

Graham's life began to change dramatically when she found out about her first husband's
infidelity after 18 years of marriage. They tried to save the relationship, but it dissolved about
three years later, causing her to fall into a deep depression.

Being Billy Graham's daughter, she said, made the struggle even more difficult.

She tried to live up to others' expectations, she said, but "You become inauthentic and you
pretend you have it all together, but inside you're dying."

After her divorce, she was introduced to a handsome widower and married him after six months,
despite warnings by her parents and others.

"Within 24 hours, I knew I had made a very bad mistake. I became afraid of him and decided not
to stick around."

So Graham, a Virginia resident for the past 27 years, went to her parents' home in Montreat,
N.C., where her father, who turned 90 on Friday, still lives. Her mother, Ruth, died last year at
age 87.

"I had to go tell my parents. I thought, 'What are they going to say to me?' As I rounded the
last bend in my father's driveway, he was waiting for me. He wrapped his arms around me and said,
'Welcome home.' He showed me enormous grace.

"As I was talking to him one day, really beating myself up and taking responsibility for
everything and just pouring my heart out, he said, 'Quit beating yourself up. We all live under
grace and do the best we can.' That's a very grace-filled statement from a man who could very well
have said, 'You're out of here. I'm tired of it.' "

In the midst of her relationship turmoil, Graham's children were hurting, too.

One of her daughters had a child at age 16 and another baby not long after. Her son was treated
for drug abuse, and another daughter suffered from bulimia.

During these trials, she decided to finish her degree at Mary Baldwin College, a women's school
in Staunton, Va., where she majored in religion communications. She began to fill in when her
sister Gigi couldn't make it to speaking events, and found she had a talent for it.

"Then people started to ask me on my own right," Ruth Graham said, which led her to start her
ministry.

It was more than her father's six-decade career that inspired her ministry. She said both of her
parents were living examples of how to follow biblical teachings.

"Our dinner conversations were about people whose lives had been changed because of the
Gospel."

Ministries of their own

Each of the five children of Billy and Ruth Graham is an evangelist or involved in a Christian
ministry:

Virginia (Gigi) Graham Tchividjian

• speaks at women's conferences and conventions about women and families.

Anne Graham Lotz

• conducts revival meetings worldwide through her AnGeL Ministries.

Ruth Graham

• is founder of Ruth Graham & Friends (www.ruthgraham andfriends.org), a ministry that helps
others address major life problems.

Franklin Graham

• has succeeded his father as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.